University of Chicago rebels against correctness pressure

The University of Chicago﻿'s dean, in a letter to members of the incoming class of 2020, gave one of the bluntest responses by a leading American university to calls for campus political correctness.

Photo: JOSHUA LOTT, STR

The anodyne welcome letter to incoming freshmen is a college staple, but this week the University of Chicago took a different approach: It sent new students a blunt statement opposing some hallmarks of campus political correctness, drawing thousands of impassioned responses, for and against, as it caromed around cyberspace.

"Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual 'safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own," John Ellison, dean of students, wrote to members of the class of 2020, who will arrive next month.

It was a not-so-veiled rebuke to the protests calling for limits on what kinds of speech should be condoned on campus, and who should be allowed to speak, that have rocked Yale, Wesleyan, Oberlin and many other colleges and universities in recent years. Some alumni, dismayed by the trend, have withheld donations from their alma maters.

'Clearer, more direct'

The Chicago letter echoed policies that were in place there and at a number of other universities calling for "the freedom to espouse and explore a wide range of ideas." But its stark wording, coming from one of the nation's leading universities, and in a routine correspondence that usually contains nothing more contentious than a dining hall schedule, felt to people on all sides like a statement.

Kevin Gannon, a history professor at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, dismissed the letter on his website as "a manifesto looking for an audience," one that "relies on caricature and boogeymen rather than reason and nuance." The Heritage Foundation wrote on Facebook that the letter "will make you stand up and cheer."

Other universities have made similar statements, but the message from Chicago is "clearer and more direct than I've seen," said Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a leading critic of what it says are destructive speech restrictions at many campuses. "Sending a letter to freshmen is different than I've seen, at least in a long time, and certainly from a major university."

Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University, said the Chicago letter was, at least in part, a publicity stunt - "Gosh, is there any doubt?" he asked - and a way of "not coddling students, but coddling donors."

Hailed as victory

Jeremy Manier, a University of Chicago spokesman, insisted there were no hidden motives behind the letter. And he said professors remained free, at their discretion, to use trigger warnings, the messages sometimes posted atop campus publications, assignments and other material, noting that they might be upsetting for people who have had traumatic experiences.

Conservatives have been the loudest critics of campus political correctness, and hailed the Chicago statement as a victory. Mary Katharine Ham, a senior writer for The Federalist, a conservative website, wrote that it was "a sad commentary on higher education that this is considered a brave and bold move, but it is, and the University of Chicago should be applauded mightily for stating what used to be obvious."

A divided left

But while conservatives often frame campus free speech as a left-versus-right issue, the dispute is often within the left.

"Historically, the left has been much more protective of academic freedom than the right, particularly in the university context," said Geoffrey R. Stone, a University of Chicago law professor who specializes in free speech issues. Conservatives "suddenly became the champions of free speech, which I find a bit ironic, but the left is divided."

Lukianoff said he and his group are often mistakenly called conservative, adding, "I'm a former ACLU person who worked in refugee camps."

The university said Friday that Ellison and the university president, Robert R. Zimmer, were not available to discuss the letter or what prompted it, but Manier referred queries to Stone, a former university provost.